Reasoning with God

#3 in the Lenten Sermon Series:

“Dennis in the Corner”

 

Then Job answered:  “Today also my complaint is bitter . . .

Oh, that I knew where I might find him . . .

I would lay my case before him,

And fill my mouth with arguments.”

(Job 23:1-4)

 

 

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the Third Sunday in Lent, February 24, 2008

Volume 2 Number 34

First United Methodist Church, 605 West 6^th, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653

 

 

Through these Sundays of Lent I’ve invited young Dennis Mitchell, aka Dennis the Menace, to lead our Lenten reflections.  For many years I’ve clipped and saved one particular genre of Dennis the Menace, what I call Dennis in the Corner.  The common denominator of these frames is Dennis having been banished by his parents to his rocker facing the corner.  The corner functions, as do the disciplines of Lent, to block out distractions of everyday life, giving Dennis space to consider what he has done wrong. 

 

Today I offer you three Dennis In-the-Corner episodes.  In the first Dennis turns in his chair, calling to his unseen mother, Alice.  Dennis calls out, “Aren’t you even going to try to REASON with me?”  

 

The second frame shows Dennis with a phone, evidently contraband, as Alice seems to have discovered his transgression and we see her standing with hand extended, clearly asking for the phone.  Dennis argues, “I thought I was allowed ONE phone call.” 

 

In the third frame, Dennis is facing the corner hugging his Teddy Bear and mumbling to himself, with mom overhearing, “I’m sorry I got caught. Isn’t that enough?”

 

I suppose it’s natural to try to Reason with the one punishing us, especially if we feel we are being treated unfairly, that we are innocent.  In our justice system this desire to Reason with our judge rises to a higher level, an absolute right of due process.  That phone call, that ability to secure an advocate, is important.  It’s an essential right to have someone able to Reason on our behalf.   This is regarded as so vital to our legal system that if one cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to take up the cause of the defendant.  

 

I wasn’t surprised to discover that the word Reason and its synonyms are often used in the book of Job.  Feeling himself unfairly judged, Job cries to God for an Advocate to stand between himself and God.  Think of the book of Job as an ancient equivalent of the accused trying to make that one telephone call to secure an Advocate through whom he might successfully Reason out his cause before the Judge.  Perhaps this is best expressed in Job 9:33, “Would that there were an umpire between us, who might lay his hand on both of us.”   In virtually every chapter, Job pleads to God, “Won’t you at least reason with me?”

 

Listen to Job in the 23^rd chapter.  “Today my complaint is bitter, his hand is heavy despite my groaning.  Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling!  I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with reasoning.  I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me.  Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power?  No, but he would give heed to me.  There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.”

 

In Chapter 31, Job is reaching for the telephone to dial up an Attorney to represent his cause, ready to sign an affidavit of wrong-doing against God in God’s not being willing to name his crime. “O that I had one to hear me!  Here is my signature!  Let the Almighty answer me!  O, that I had the indictment written by my adversary . . . I am in terror of calamity from God, and I cannot reason with his majesty, for he is lofty.”

 

Job’s plea, Won’t you at least try to REASON with me, brings us to face squarely the difficult questions of human suffering, of God’s justice in either causing or allowing such suffering to occur.  Job’s protestations of innocence, along with his complaint about providence, is shared by others in the Old Testament, where the natural assumption for how providence should work in life seems to have been a simple Blessing/Cursing motif – Do good and be rewarded; Do evil and be punished.  Consider Jeremiah’s  complaint in chapter 12, “You will be in the right, O LORD, when I lay charges against you, but let me put my case to you.  Why does the way of the guilty prosper?” 

 

The question is a substantial one, naturally invoked by the righteous when calamity occurs.   However, rather than pursuing that question, I want now to consider another biblical example, a quite different Lenten posture of self-reflection.  Unlike Job, King David felt a spiritual suffering for a sin he knew very well he had committed.   Having heard the prophet Nathan’s accusatory words, “Thou art the man,” Psalm 51 becomes perhaps the quintessential expression of repentance in the bible.  “I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before you.  Against you, you alone, have I sinned . . . so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.” 

 

Unlike Job, David owns a keen awareness of his transgression, holding God guiltless, pleading, not to Reason with God, but simply for God to show mercy.  “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions and wash me thoroughly from my iniquity.”  For David, his sin cannot be atoned for with a sacrifice, but with genuine expressions of a broken heart.  “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.  For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give you a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.  The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”  For David, words seem important.

 

 

Hosea wrote, “Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.  Take words with you and return to the LORD, say to him ‘Take away all guilt . . . and we will offer the fruit of our lips.’”  Words?  Take words with you.  Surely that’s not all – just words?   And in response to our words, mere words, God responds, “I will heal their disloyalty, I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.”   

 

But how do we know that our words are authentic expressions of sorrow and repentance?  How can our words reveal if it is not only absolution we are seeking, but strength to accomplish fundamental change in our attitudes and behavior?  We may even know that our past resolve to change has been weakened over time.  Does our inability truly and permanently to change reveal a repentance that was never really up to par?  I rather think that if the desire to change is sincere, even if our attempts end in failure, such an attitude fits the definition of repentance in both Old and New Testaments.  

 

Certainly no formula of words can impress God, who looks not upon the text of our petitions, however eloquently formulated.  No, rather God looks on the heart.  Our words need not even be spoken or articulated — it is in the heart that the “enough” shall be discovered by God. 

 

Still, words are important.  Words that consciously bring God into the equation remind ourselves and others of a higher calling to integrity, virtue, and love.  Martin Marty wrote a wonderful column in The Christian Century titled Kinda Sorry.  The essay surveys modern day confessions of wrong-doing in the public arena, lamenting the loss of God in confession.  Marty writes, “Vanished is the power of the purifying rhetoric that once gave voice to sinners in classic words and acts of contrition and confession.”  The article delightfully takes the classic language of the church’s confession from the Book of Common Prayer and aligns it, phrase by phrase, with modern banal phrases of confession gathered from newspapers, broadcasts, and books.  As you listen I want you to note that the modern phrases sound very much like Dennis.  “I’m sorry I got caught!  Isn’t that enough?” 

 

Here’s the classic language of the church’s confession.  “We have erred.  We have strayed from our ways like lost sheep.  We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.  We have offended against thy holy laws.  We have done those things which we ought not to have done.  We have left undone those things which we ought to have done.  And there is no health in us.  Have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.  Spare thou those, O God, who confess their faults.  We ask forgiveness for our faults, our faults, our most grievous faults.  I detest all my sins and I firmly resolve, with the help of thy grace, to sin no more, and to avoid the near occasions of sin.”  Now let’s compare that language with some modern expressions of public contrition taken gleaned from recent news articles:

 

“We have erred,” says the confession prayer.  “I didn’t think I’d get caught,” said Pete Rose after he was charged with unethical and illegal gambling on baseball, when he at last confessed that his denials of wrong-doing over these previous years were untrue.

 

“We have strayed from our ways like lost sheep,” says the confession.  Compare that to, “I sincerely regret my actions in this case,” words were spoken by a USA Today executive caught embezzling $3.6 million.

 

“We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.”  Said Howard Donath, an Illinois child pornographer convicted of sex acts against a little neighbor girl, “I am just a man who made a terrible mistake.”   This is probably the most common excuse we offer ourselves, “I’m only human.”  In other words, “Yeah, I did it, but what do you expect?”  It is an excuse that dishonors God, who created us in his image and likeness.

 

“We have done those things which we ought not to have done.”  “If anyone was offended, I apologize” California Governor Arnold Swarzenegger, during his campaign when he was accused of and admitted to groping women.  Many similar I’m-sorry-if-anyone-was-offended statements.  Such “confessions” become tantamount to saying, “What I’m sorry for is not my actions, but that you folks are so narrow that this bothers you at all.”

 

“We ask his forgiveness for our faults, our faults, our most grievous faults.”  Again, Pete Rose, “I’m not going to break down and beg your forgiveness like a T. V. preacher.  I’m just not built to act all sorry or sad or guilty.”

 

Is our repentance not genuine until our lives are successfully and irrevocably turned?  When we find ourselves again to fail, we’re tempted to think, “I must have never been truly repentant, else I would not have fallen again.”  Sometimes, it seems, we judge ourselves much more harshly than does God.  No, but I think that true repentance involves our resolve to change, and is not measured by our inability to effect that change perfectly or permanently. 

 

Perhaps, in our desire to Reason with God, it would be good to hear God Reason with us.  “Come now, and let us Reason together, says the LORD, though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.  Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18). 

So “take with you words” and know that God, who sees the heart, hears those words -- even the unspoken words of our hearts.   This is the heart of the Good News, that when we feel insufficient to frame our words, we have in Christ an Advocate, as John writes, “If anyone sins we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”

 

What wonderful words!  We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.  

 

  Sources and notes:

“Kinda Sorry,” an essay by Martin E. Marty, The Christian Century, February 10, 2004